The industry doesn’t look ‘traumatized and terrified’

In August, the economy lost 30,000 healthcare jobs…. So why are jobs down?

It is simply because the industry is traumatized and terrified by the impact of ObamaCare. No one knows what the reimbursement rates will be or what restrictions will be imposed on facility construction or utilization. Nobody can plan ahead. This regulatory nightmare is the direct result of the ambitious scope of ObamaCare. So no new jobs are being created…

Now, as it turns out, Dick Morris can’t read. The jobs report he was referencing showed the health care industry added 30,000, but the Republican consultant misread the data and thought it said the opposite. His entire column was based on a mistake that got the story backwards.

But Morris’ confusion notwithstanding, I noticed this tidbit in today’s jobs report: “Health care continued to add jobs in December (+23,000); employment in hospitals increased by 10,000. Over the year, health care employment has risen by 315,000.”

In fact, as it turns out, the health care industry added more jobs in 2011 than any other industry in the country. Of all the jobs created last year, roughly one-fifth were health care workers.

Now look again at the arguments raised by Morris (and others on the right) about the dreadful impact the Affordable Care Act is having on health care jobs: the industry is “traumatized and terrified”; employers can’t “plan ahead”; it’s a “regulatory nightmare”; and it’s created an environment in which “no new jobs are being created.”

I certainly don’t expect conservatives to start publishing corrected assumptions, but if the Affordable Care Act were as awful as the right believes, why did the health care industry add 315,000 jobs last year?